Friends. Photography. Adventure.

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”Maya Angelou

Exposing 40 has taken a bit of a leap across the decades this weekend, but if this blog is about celebrating our bodies as they age then this woman is an example to us all. The wonderful Eye turned 60 this week so I’m delighted to share some photos I shot back in the autumn.

Happy birthday Eye, may your sixties be a decade of celebration and one in which you now thrive. Xx

Exposing40 and the same on Twitter, although I’m not too secretive about my real name so will likely tell you if you ask!

What are you most looking forward to about Eroticon 2018?

Like everyone I am looking forward to catching up with everyone at the two socials. The socials were difficult for me last year as a former friend who I wasn’t expecting to see turned up and was behaving badly. Very little unsettles me but unkindness does; without that black cloud I’m looking forward to being much more of a social butterfly! And I can’t wait for the midnight pyjama and prosecco parties with the gorgeous Tabitha Rayne who’s staying at mine this year.

Re the sessions, this year I’m only at the Sunday. I’ve embarked on a ridiculous endeavour to visit all EU countries before B****t next March so I’ve had to scrap my annual jaunt to Edinburgh Festival and reduce WOW and Eroticon to one day each so I can plough funds into planes, trains and AirBnBs! I’m looking forward to Oloni, Kendra and Lori’s sessions and of course I’ll go to Molly’s photography session. I also LOVED the readings last year.

We are creating a play list of songs for the Friday Night Meet and Greet. Nominate one song that you would like us to add to the play list and tell us why you picked that song

Acrylic Afternoons by Pulp. For many people Different Class is Peak Pulp but for me His n Hers is Jarvis writing about snatched sex, bad sex, lust, longing and regret at his very best.

What’s the first career you dreamed of having as a kid?

Well, I laughed out loud when I read @19syllables Meet and Greet as I also had Sound of Music-inspired aspirations to be a nun! I was also a bit obsessed with Lady Di and spent a lot of time wondering how I could become a princess. I don’t think I was cut out for being a nun or a princess!

I honestly can’t remember what proper career aspirations I had though. I think it was probably something to do with horses and showjumping, but my riding days ended when I left Oxfordshire for Wales aged 10.

Weirdest place you’ve ever gotten up to mischief (define ‘mischief’ however you like…)

Fucking, it would probably be on a ferry on the Irish Sea between Dublin and Holyhead. But I’ve also sat at my desk in an open plan office and wanked through a hole in my trouser pocket. Maintaining a conversation with a colleague while I came at my desk felt pretty mischievous.

Tell us two truths and a lie about yourself

I did a live TV interview naked.

I sneaked into the Queen’s private rooms at the Royal Albert Hall and took a photo of my friend sat on her toilet.

I’ve had ‘the role of nudity in political protest’ on my list of things to write about for years. Since June 2015 in fact, when an image in an exhibition at the Tate Modern sparked the idea. Last year pledging to finally write it up was on my post-Eroticon list of ‘ten takeaways’. So, with just a week to go until this year’s Eroticon, I thought it was time to shit or get off the pot…

Clearly it’s not much of a secret that I love getting my kit off in public! And even more than feeling the breeze around my own nether regions I love encouraging other into the joyful abandon that comes with cavorting naked, celebrating their gorgeous selves. But aside from the odd Sinful Sunday or two, I rarely get truly political on this site. But what better day than International Women’s Day to celebrate the women who have used their nudity to champion far greater causes. Here are a small selection…

Lady Godiva

Legend has it that in the 11th century Lady Godiva road naked through the streets of Coventry in protest at the taxes being imposed on local residents by her husband. The first written account of this event was not recorded until two centuries after the alleged event so it is likely more myth than fact, but it’s a good one. It’s also where the term ‘Peeping Tom’ for a voyeur came from as apparently the only person who ignored her request to look away as she passed was Tailor Thomas!

Women’s War in East Nigeria

Before Britain colonised Nigeria in 1884, power was shared between men and women. Women held senior political, judicial and religious roles but colonisation eroded this power. In 1929 tens of thousands of Igbo women used nudity to protest their reduced authority. British officials characterised the women as grotesque and sexually available, while African journals rather euphemistically described them “exposing the physical markers of their status as guardians and reproducers of the land and its inhabitants.”

Polka Dot Planet

In 1968, Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama held naked protests outside the New York Stock Exchange and on Brooklyn Bridge. These protests, or “happenings” as she called them, saw Kusama paint polka dots on the naked bodies of protestors to bring attention to the antiwar movement. In an open letter to Nixon she wrote ‘Our earth is like one little polka dot, among millions of other celestial bodies, one orb full of hatred and strife amid the peaceful, silent spheres. Let’s you and I change all that and make this world a new Garden of Eden…. You can’t eradicate violence by using more violence.’

My body is my own

In March 2013, Tunisian feminist and Femen activist, Amina Tyler posted topless photographs of herself on Facebook with the words ‘my body is my own’ scrawled across her chest as a protest against patriarchy. Some claimed she was dishonouring women and the leader of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice called on her to receive 100 lashes or even be stoned to death. Others, such as political commentator, Jihad el Zein said that when young educated women from the Muslim world pose nude it indicates their moral strength to stand up against the oppression of women.

Tunick v Trump

In May 2016, Spencer Tunick, the creative master when it comes to photographing mass public nudity, put out a call for volunteers to interrupt business as usual at the Republican National Convention that coming July. The only requirement was to be a woman. The photography was to be an act of peaceful protest against the hateful rhetoric Trump and his supporters had directed at women. The results of the gathering and the words of the women who participated are wonderful!

There are many views on the effectiveness of women using nudity in protest, from those who think it still has impact to those who argue it’s time for a rethink. I can see both sides of the argument but as long as the naked female body has the power to make people stop, look and take note, then I think it probably does have a role. What do you think?

“I am my own muse, I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to know better.” Frida Kahlo

I’ve written before about meeting two wonderful women in 2016, naked and on stage at a life drawing class at the WOW festival. On a cold (although little did we know what weather was just around the corner!) Saturday in January we headed off for an outdoor adventure. Here’s the first photo from that day out. Just look at this fabulous Frida Kahlo jacket and awesome silver DMs! If you’re based near Bath and want to check out where my friend got her awesome jacket visit this shop.

So, @19syllables and I have been collaborating for longer than we thought! Last week when we were brainstorming mirror ideas she said: ‘What about that kettle photo you tweeted?’

It turned out to be a toaster, but gosh, she’s got a loooooong memory! I tweeted this photo in May 2015, a whole two months before we actually met! When I expanded the replies to the original tweet I noticed she’d tweeted the above haiku at me, which neither of us remember. So there you are, discarded photos and haikus, idly tweeted, quickly forgotten, but resurrected in the dying days of February Photo Fest!

Side note: I know this isn’t technically a mirror but it’s a reflective surface so I’m taking this one; it’s the 27th February and my creative reserves are running low…